Battle speed

The Washington Times ^ | April 7, 2003 | House Editorial

[xsysmgr]

Every war teaches the world something about the ever-evolving nature of warfare. The distinctive feature of this war is rapidity: of battlefield intelligence, of fire, of change in tactics, of large unit movement, of reporting and of national mood. In ways that even respected, recently retired generals seem not to have understood, this surge in the tempo of battlefield activities has upset traditional concepts of what constitutes dominating battlefield strength. Clearly, the Iraqi military leadership had no concept of how quickly American forces can tactically adjust to ambushes and other battlefield surprises. Our real- time battlefield intelligence permits even tip-of-the-spear reconnaissance units to either prepare for or detour around most upcoming enemy engagements.

[WhiskeyPapa]

This is a vital asset that, for example, General George Patton in the fall of 1944 didn't enjoy when he was making his dash across France. He had to come across and deal with unknown forces at every turn in the road.

Patton had a pretty good idea of what was going on out front of his units. He made extensive use of ground based reconnaisance -- basically cavalry units in jeeps and scout cars, to keep him abreast of developments. He also used his air assets very skillfully and he had help from the French. Patton was exactly the right man in exactly the right situation.

It's probably no coincidence that Patton is the one general you see in the Army's new ad campaign.

It's often said that an army plans to fight the last war. This war now is the war before the war before the last war. :)

Walt

[x1stcav]

The (real, legitimate) Times has got this exactly right. One of the enjoyments of this past weekend was watching the quagmire/quicksand/Vietnam-reduxers squirm to try to explain their way our of their dire predictions of just a few days before.

Eleanor Clift looked particularly pained in her nether parts.

[WhiskeyPapa]

He [Patton] couldn't call in air support without hours or days of planning — if then.

The air guys kept flights (four aircraft) of fighter bombers on station in what they called "cab ranks" so that the air response over Patton's and the other U.S. armies was very responsive, if the weather was good.

Walt

[ClearCase_guy]

I really like the observation that the anti-war media is caught off-guard by our fast-reaction forces in the same way that the Iraqis are caught off-guard. It's like attacking the fifth column while attacking the other four.

[dead]

I saw some "weblogger" nobody on Fox with a guy from the American Spectator. They were analysing the webloggers absolutely asinine writing from a few days prior. The guy basically said things like "Vietnam again" "Rumsfeld's incompetent" and other dumbass "quagmire" opinions.

Despite being proven completely and utterly wrong in every way, this idiot refused to concede the obvious fact that he was an idiot. He smugly kept insisting that even though events had proven him wrong, his criticism was still accurate and valid.

Unfortunately, the guy from the American Spectator was not up to the task of putting the guy in his place.

[x1stcav]

There were several instances of this over the last 4-5 days.

The talking points rebuttal the leftists have put together seems to run along the lines of, 'well, maybe I'm wrong about all of the details and maybe the outcome will prove me wrong, but that doesn't mean I was actually wrong because military success doesn't guarantee long-term success, and so I'm probably still right because we'll just never know what actually went wrong in the first place, but we know that with Republicans in charge there's always something wrong'.

You areright about one thing though; our people, for some reason, will simply not administer the coup de grace when given an easy target.

[Servant of the Nine]

Thus, war critics are left stranded behind the line of new war reporting, with their credibility impeached for all the political world to see. Television images of surrendering Iraqi soldiers are intercut with images of retired American television generals and civilian critics trying to explain why what they said 72 hours ago was completely wrong.

Hehehe

So9

[Redbob]

"He also used his air assets very skillfully and he had help from the French."

And in spite of that help, he was successful!

Wasn't it Patton who said, "I'd rather have a German division in front of me than a French division behind me"?

[F-117A]

Thus, war critics are left stranded behind the line of new war reporting, with their credibility impeached for all the political world to see. Television images of surrendering Iraqi soldiers are intercut with images of retired American television generals and civilian critics trying to explain why what they said 72 hours ago was completely wrong.

Cause they're battleship Generals!